


But Not Forgotten

by saltedpin



Category: Watchmen
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:38:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltedpin/pseuds/saltedpin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan is almost getting used to this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Not Forgotten

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blue Soaring (autoschediastic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/autoschediastic/gifts).



> Marked as gen, but definite M/M undertones. Read at your own risk.

Dan is almost getting used to this.

He still tenses when the branches of the tree outside scrape against his roof on windy nights, and still finds it hard to occupy the evenings that now seem to stretch out emptily before him. But he's stopped looking out of his windows when darkness starts to slide down over the city, and he's learning more and more to ignore the night-time sounds that filter in from the street. He lives in a big house in a good neighbourhood. Here, at least, he knows the police will come when they're called, and he tries to forget the times and places they won't. He tells himself there's nothing else he can do.

Money flows into his already fat bank account – Dan hasn't sought to understand how or why, and trusts his financial advisors to an extent that his father would have found reprehensible. His father had trusted his own judgement above all else, and believed in what he could hold, what he could count. Dan didn't blame him in the least, and was grateful for a father who had indulged his son to the extent that he let him discover his own interests. _Everything I've done_, his father had told him when he was young, very young, _I've done so you won't have to see the things I've seen. People are the ugliest of creatures, Dan. I can see why you'd prefer birds._

As a grown man, Dan wishes his father was alive now that he has the words to tell him that humans are not solely the sum of the things his father had seen. He wanted to tell him what he was doing, that he had not become the people his father had watched do nothing while the terrible truth was buried under ash and the dirt of a Polish village no one had ever heard of before.

These days, Dan settles for reminding himself that he's still a good person, that he has simply obeyed the laws, and that his usefulness as a costumed vigilante was at an end in any case. Things don't last forever. He'd do more harm than good going out to try to save the world now, and he's better off staying put, finding a new outlet. These days, he donates to charity. He reads newspapers. He knows what's going on in the world. No one could accuse him of ignorance.

Dan knows he's not that old, but as he tries to settle on his sofa with a book, he feels age crawl down his spine like spiders, like wings, there's a comfortable layer of fat growing between what he had once worked hard to maintain as skin laid over sinew, and he's started to let his hair feather over his collar. He tells himself he would have had to retire by this time anyway; that surely, anyone reasonable would have to see the truth of the situation.

_Anyone reasonable._ Dan smiles grimly for a moment, before pushing the thought away.

He occasionally leaves his backdoor unlatched all the same, just in case.

***

For a short time after he retires, Dan takes up smoking. He doesn't especially enjoy it, but he does enjoy people's surprised looks before they say, 'I didn't know you smoked,' even if it's followed by a disbelieving arch of their eyebrow. Once or twice, Dan has considered responding, 'There's a lot you don't know about me.' But, remembering the fat he's started to accumulate and the glasses he now needs to wear more and more often, he confines himself to what he hopes is a roguish smile, even though he's lost his cigarette that way once or twice.

The thing he enjoys most about his new habit is going out on his balcony on nights when the cold seeps through his jacket, through his skin, into his bones, and the grey smoke envelops him like a soft and silent scarf. The apricot glow of the cigarette tip lights the underside of his hand, and in these moments he feels strong, confident and almost mysterious, and it's a feeling that he's missed. He thinks of Bogart, of 1930s dens of jazz and sin, of lamplight, pork pie hats and noir heroes who never get the girl but never expected to in the first place. For tiny moments, he can almost believe he's glamorous.

Dan's adventure with smoking comes to an abrupt end. One evening he comes home to find Rorschach in his kitchen, the first time Dan's seen him since he retired. In the mildly stunned silence that follows, Rorschach says, "Found cigarettes. In trash now."

Dan decides things between him and smoking weren't really working out anyway.

***

It's the first in a series of irregular visits from Rorschach. After Dan finds his bathroom window jimmied open, his front door lock picked, and the manhole to his attic left open, he gives up leaving his backdoor unlatched and leaving his burglar alarm off. It becomes almost a game, and on the nights that Dan arrives home and finds everything as it should be and has to disarm the alarm himself, he's disappointed. Knowing the hours Rorschach keeps, he stays up later and later, waiting. It wouldn't be going too far to suggest Dan now arranges his schedule to suit Rorschach's nocturnal visits, and on the nights he doesn't show, Dan almost feels stood up.

To be honest, he's not sure why it means so much to him – even as a lingering connection to a life he has left behind, Rorschach is pretty poor. He doesn't talk about it, he won't tell Dan what, if any, cases he is working on.

Once, while doing his dishes in an apron and rubber gloves as Rorschach eats beans behind him, Dan asks if he's gotten in touch with any of the other former Crimebusters since their retirement.

"You know, sometimes I miss the life, Rorschach. You and me. Do you ever think about –" Dan stumbles, and cuts himself off. For a moment, the sound of Rorschach's chewing stops, and Dan imagines he can feel his gaze cutting down the flesh of his back – but when he turns to face him, Rorschach has his head turned to the window, reminding Dan all too much of a cat taking interest in a bird.

From outside, there's a faint clatter of something hitting the ground, followed by the louder crash of trashcans tipping over.

"Probably just cats," Dan says, lowering his head and turning back to the dishes.

"No." Rorschach has already pulled his mask down over his mouth and is pulling on the one glove he had taken off as he stands and heads to the door. "You stay here," he commands, as Dan starts to follow.

"Come on, Rorschach," Dan says, "what kind of person would I be if –" Dan stops mid-sentence as Rorschach's head snaps towards him, and the air between them bends under the weight of the unspoken retort – _exactly the kind of person you've become. Exactly like all the others._

Dan leans heavily against his kitchen table, left stunned for a moment by the impact of those imagined words. By the time he's recovered enough to move, Rorschach has disappeared out the front door and into the darkness of the alley next to Dan's house.

When Dan catches up to Rorschach it's already over: he sees a young woman lying, conscious and terrified on a pile of garbage bags, and Rorschach's arm snapping back like a whip, like a wire, before cracking down of the skull of her would-be assailant. Blood is already pooling around his head. He's obviously not getting up soon.

Rushing forward, "That's _enough,_" Dan says, grabbing Rorschach's arm, using his entire strength to pull it back. Rorschach whirls to face him, and for a moment, for the first time Dan is actually frightened of his friend. But it only lasts a second; Rorschach, subdued, visibly untenses, and Dan lets him go.

"Miss – miss, are you all right?" Dan extends his hand, still covered in a dishwashing glove, to the woman lying in the alley, the terror in her eyes lighted by his kitchen window. Having escaped one lunatic, she now seems faced with yet another lunatic and friend of lunatic, who appears to be wearing an apron and rubber gloves.

"N-no –" she whispers, before heaving herself up – "Keep away from me," she shrieks, taking off down the alley, leaving her soiled jacket, her broken slingback heel dragging after her.

"Miss, please –" Dan calls, but she's gone. Defeated, Dan turns to the silent Rorschach, who has his back to him, staring down at the prone body of the attacker.

"Told you to stay inside."

"Rorschach, it doesn't have to be like this," Dan says. "It's not one extreme or the other."

Rorschach doesn't even turn to face him. "Made your choice. Live with it."

Dan raises his arms in a gesture of appeal, but Rorschach has already faded into the enfolding darkness of the alley.

***

The weeks pile up into months, but Rorschach doesn't return, and eventually Dan stops waiting for him.

Dan does this and that to fill the time, he writes articles for journals and decides to return to complete the masters degree which had been temporarily curtailed by his involvement in crime fighting. He realises how much he has missed this, to immerse himself in some other world of air and accuracy and simplicity, where everything is done out of necessity and not choice. His future starts to look less and less like the long, empty stretch of a life half-lived, and guiltily, he realises that it's the absence of Rorschach's influence that has allowed him to see the possibilities of life outside the bubble of crime and punishment. _Real life,_ he thinks, _is multifaceted. It doesn't have a true face. It has the face you choose to give it._

With a jolt, Dan realises that Rorschach is the only person he knows whose face he has never seen. He's seen his chin, partially covered in beans and tomato paste, and he knows the line of his jaw beneath the mysterious, moving cloth of his mask. He realises now why he always avoided looking too hard whenever Rorschach exposed even the slightest hint of what lay beneath that cloth – looking seemed almost obscene somehow, as if Rorschach had peeled away his skin, to reveal the nothingness underneath. Rorschach had kept every part of himself so assiduously covered that any flash of skin, from the jut of his chin to the backs of his knuckles, knobbled with scars and freckles, seemed scandalous.

Nevertheless, Dan has felt the pierce of Rorschach's gaze with a keenness he has never experienced with any other person. Rorschach's eyes can be felt through any disguise. Dan knows that despite everything, he must be missing him, because one day as he's buying his evening paper he imagines that familiar slice in his back; but when he turns, he sees only a boy reading comics and the neighbourhood sign-wielding lunatic, turning away and heading down the street, into the gathering dusk.

***

Though the instances are getting rarer, Dan sometimes positively itches to talk about the crime fighting life, with somebody – anybody. With Rorschach uninclined to talk and, in any case, apparently having done with their partnership for good, Dan is not sure where to turn – though he's loathe to admit it, Adrian, the world's smartest and richest man, intimidates him somewhat. Even if he did know how to get in touch with the Comedian, Dan never felt comfortable around him – and he doubts Dr Manhattan would be up for a heartwarming discussion of their pasts; not when, to him, it's probably still happening every moment of every day. For a moment, he lingers on the thought of Laurie – though he doesn't know where she is now, and wonders, like every boy who ever had a crush on an unattainable girl, if she even remembers him.

Very occasionally, Dan goes to visit Hollis Mason – even though he never quite gets over the feeling he is imposing on the time of a legend, a hero, someone far greater than himself and who be believes achieved so much more as Nite Owl than Dan ever did.

Hollis has never been anything other than genuinely warm and willing to talk about old time with Dan whenever he's called, and despite himself, Dan can't believe it's an act. But Hollis, whilst being polite, makes it clear that he never completely approved of Dan's partnership with Rorschach – he never fully approved of _Rorschach_, period – his methods were too wild and too violent; in Hollis' opinion, he long ago crossed the line and into the same territory as the Comedian, becoming what they were supposed to be guarding against.

"The Silhouette – Miss Zandt, I should say – she never did us any favours either," Hollis remarks one night over their beer and pork rinds, and Dan knows better than to try to bring up what he had heard about Captain Metropolis and Hooded Justice.

The one time he had tried, Hollis had politely but curtly told cut him off – "I've heard those rumours too, Dan, but Nelson was a _marine_, for Chrissakes – a man's man if ever I met one." After a moment's pause, he had continued – "Mind you, if any of that stuff did go on – and I'm not saying it did, I don't speak ill of the dead – they had the good sense to keep it quiet. I don't care what people do in their private lives, but Silhouette… well, she wasn't exactly discreet, if you know what I mean. Nelson never gave me any reason to suspect anything, and Hooded Justice, he always had Sally hanging off his arm. Now Sally – there was a woman, a real princess. I know we might look decrepit to you youngsters now, but believe me, back in the day there was no man alive who would have turned down a date with the Silk Spectre. Hooded Justice was the luckiest guy in the world to have a girl like that, as far as I was concerned."

Dan can believe it. And he never gets into a discussion about the Silhouette and her fate with Hollis – he can hardly fault him, it was a different time and costumed vigilantes had enough troubles without the taint of sexual scandal following them.

Dan remembers, though, when he first started reading up on the history of crime fighters, took the first steps along the road to where he was today (though never could have imagined it at the time), he had gone to visit the grave of Ursula Zandt, the same way the other kids at school went to visit the resting places of their favourite movie stars. He had been too young and far too naïve at the time to understand the nature of the Silhouette's crimes – but he had still known that he was doing something with the whiff of danger and scandal, and at the time he had been far more boyishly intrigued in the smoulder and stare of the Silhouette than the buxom, smiling Silk Spectre.

Dan remembers he was shocked when he arrived at the grave – a tiny headstone, in a forgotten corner of the cemetery – to see someone had recently placed fresh flowers and swept. He had believed he was unique in his idolisation of those seemingly long ago heroes, and it had not occurred to him then that they had been people, rather than legends.

In later years, when he realises what those flowers must have signified, Dan never fails to feel a terrible sadness in his stomach, in his heart. Though he doubts Rorschach would appreciate the comparison, Dan somehow feels that he and the Silhouette are more similar than Rorschach realises. From what he has been able to put together from Hollis' incomplete picture of her, the Silhouette saw the world very much in terms of black and white, and would argue a point long after the other Minutemen had wished for a more or less peaceable agreement to disagree. She continued to fight crime after her ostracision from the Minutemen and from society. She knew what she believed and who she was. She had, it seemed, refused to compromise.

Dan sometimes wonders if the Silhouette would have lived to talk to him if there had been someone there to back her up during her last fight – and, suddenly, wonders if Rorschach will end up the same way, now that everyone else has retired. Dan thinks – how would he even know if Rorschach had died, or was lying somewhere dying? Could he have stopped it, had he been there? And even more disturbingly, does Rorschach have anyone who would lay the flowers and sweep the grave?

For a short time after this, Dan, nearly unconsciously, starts peering down alleys and into dark places he never would have noticed, almost anticipating the sight of Rorschach, bleeding or dead, because no one had been there to help him.

***

After a while, Dan starts to think that maybe he was only treating the symptoms, and not the disease. Of course – justice after the fact was important. But perhaps, with his power to punish taken from him, he can develop the power to prevent.

It's this line of thinking that leads him to take a job at the local community college. _Education is the key_, his father had always said, _education is the path that shows us the way out. With a decent education, there is no fork in the road you can't take._

Dan enjoys it. He glows with pride at the students who excel, confident that he has at least given them a foothold to climb to something better. He mourns the students who mysteriously stop arriving to class, who have fallen through the cracks and into the maw of what lies beneath. He occasionally hopes that wherever they are, the system catches up with them before Rorschach does.

Later, Dan sets up his own small charity, designed to take inner city children from impoverished backgrounds on field trips to zoos and out to the countryside, to show them that the world is bigger than dark streets, than the glow of neon and the water-stained walls of their homes.

"Philanthropy, great," his accountant had said when Dan told him about his idea. "Charity attracts donations; it'll get you in the papers. Society eats that stuff up." He had smiled knowingly over Dan's mild protests – "Sure, Mr Dreiberg. It's for the children. We all know that."

No matter what Dan's intentions, his accountant proves to be correct. For a short time, he's made uncomfortably aware that he has become flavour of the month in society circles – a wealthy eccentric, simultaneously lauded and patronised, indulgently giggled at as he stutters and sweats his way through a dinner speech about how the streets could be safe for everyone, if only more people had the will to try.

When the college goes into receivership after it comes to light that the chief executive officer has absconded with a large portion of their funding, Dan tries to suppress the wave of relief he feels. The parties held in his honour become fewer, before eventually it's forgotten that they were ever held. Dan can once again spend his evenings in peace, his books of birds piling up around him as he reads later and later into the night.

***

Before Dan knows it, it's been five years since he retired. He's comfortable in the skin he's grown, and he almost never takes his glasses off. Nights of sitting up in front of typewriters, editing essays on ornithology have taken their toll, and his largely sedentary lifestyle is showing around his middle. He's started up a tradition of seeing Hollis every Saturday – this seems to soothe whatever nostalgic longing he has for the old days, and when he tries to see himself as others might see him, he sees a quiet academic, affable, inoffensive, settling down towards middle age with no possible qualms about it.

He no longer reads the papers. The headlines, screaming of portending doom, are enough – they pierce into the comfortable aura he has tried so hard to cultivate, forcing upon him knowledge that the past is over, it is done with, and no amount of talk and beer and closing himself up from current affairs will change it.

He knows Rorschach is still walking the streets – local rumour has never died down, and Dan almost smiles when he overhears talk about the latest criminal found beaten and bloody, another gang leader who never returned after walking home last night. Against all odds, Dan tries to believe that as long as Rorschach is out there, the inevitable tide of history can be held back. He can stay where he is right now forever, comfortable, and with memories of a past spent doing what he thought was right. His father had told Dan that he would not see what his father had seen – that his life would be free of ash, free of dirt, free of the powerlessness to stop the swell of events, the strategic games that governments played with their people. Dan had thought his father was right. Apart from anything else, he had thought that people would learn. He still can't believe that they won't.

_Oh, how the ghost of you clings._ Dan smiles slightly as he wanders past the smoky and slithering advertisement, unironically amused by how Adrian seems to know just what people want. Dan likes to believe he has settled the past into where it belongs. It's not until he arrives home to find his back door latch lifted from its cradle, and a short note – _Came to see you. Waited. Still not home._ – left written on a napkin on his kitchen table that he is shaken out of his illusion.

Dan sinks into his kitchen chair, and, for the first time since he was small and being told stories of the ash and the dirt and the swell of events his father could not change, he cries.


End file.
